Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/52
Helena Coleman
Out beyond the shimmering waves
Of your blue, encircling sea,
Lie in nameless, foreign graves
They who kept your England free.
When you watch the wheeling stars
On soft, summer-scented nights,
With no memory that mars,
Only English sounds and sights,
(Only infinite delights!),
Pray that every British heart
In the years that are to be,
Play the honest British part,
Holding life more reverently
For the sacred lives they gave,
And the deathless liberty
They are dying now to save.
Little children, yet unborn,
Take yours lives in holy trust,
Yours the roses, theirs the thorn,
Yours the sweetness, theirs the dust,
That love keep you safe and warm,
Bowed they to a bitter storm
ROCKING IN THE BAY
FROM my nook beneath the pine
I can see the graceful line
Of the little brown canoe in the bay;
Bright and windy is the weather,
But there's no one to untether
And go speeding to the open far away,
Where the ragged clouds are flying
And the sunset gold is dying—
Empty, listless, she is lying,
Idly rocking, idly rocking
In the bay.
How she'd leap to answer him
When he took the paddle slim
And they'd race as laughing victors to the fray!
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